Single Focus vs. Focus Lists
I'll preface by saying I'm very new to Nirvana - I just finished a 3 hour inbox-dumping session involving my electronic and physical extraneous inboxes (yeah I strayed far from GTD in the last few months, oops).
After organizing and emptying my Nirvana inbox , I seem to have a huge number of items in the Next Actions list. I feel all of these items are legitimately in the correct lists now due to their necessity and longevity. However: wow, it's daunting to look at a list of 100 NA's that have almost no logical sequence or association.
I ended up putting a lot of "definitely" items into the Someday/Maybe list simply because they are 1+ weeks out. From my understanding of GTD, this is not part of the canonical method, but I have no other way of properly filtering those items out of my NA view.
I just came back to GTD after an extended affair with Mark Forster's AutoFocus system. His process is much more my personality style and I really love it, but its major downfall is an inherent (and even intentional) lack of organization. The list is supposed to "work itself out" hence the "Auto" portion of its namesake. That worked fine for personal tasks, but I'm a Project Manager and live by a pretty strict process in my work life. Still, Forster made the point of a single focus at all times (as opposed to focus lists, as I've seen mentioned multiple times in this forum). This is not exactly a groundbreaking idea in the world of task management, but I think Forster is on to something with the idea of one thing at a time above all.
My very brief experience with Nirvana is that it currently lacks functionality to focus the user completely. I interpret that idea from the various personal implementations mentioned in the forum that involve misusing lists/tags/AoRs to create a system of "true" Next Actions that take priority due to necessity or immediacy.
Without straying from GTD methodology, I think this could be remedied with UI functionality that allows the user to select a current focus. I'm sure little to none of this is a new idea on the forums, I just haven't had a chance to review many posts yet.
I've forgotten how GTD manages incomplete tasks. If I'm working on an e-mail that ends up taking extended research and I have to leave it for a few hours, do I mark the e-mail task as complete and re-add as a new item? Or leave it as is and just remember where I left off when I return?
Based on the answers to these questions, a UI functionality that tracks a user's current focus would require 100% completion before moving to the next NA. In the case of incompletion, the system would re-add the same or modified task to the list.
As I recall from DA's book, the whole purpose of GTD is to keep responsibilities from falling through the cracks, and choosing a single focus at a time just seems to me a logical extension of that idea. I only make distinction of a single focus because I've seen several discussions on focus lists in my short time here. Lists could contain NAs from 10 different projects - so then my question would be "Which action could you actually be focusing on with 9 others staring you in the face?"
Please re-direct me if all of this has been brought up before. I am liking Nirvana a lot so far, and want to give myself the benefit of a full implementation so I can devote some effort to the development process. Thanks a lot.
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2 Posted by Proximo on 07 Jun, 2010 04:33 PM
@Allen,
What a fantastic post. I don't know where to start and I am afraid my answer will be 4 times longer than your original post. Rather than go into a lot of details about GTD and how I use it with Nirvana, I will try my best to be very brief here and allow other great users to input their thoughts as well.
First thing in my head is this. GTD is simple and is only complicated when people choose to do so. This has always been my stance with GTD and why I am so productive with Nirvana.
GTD has boundaries on how the Methodology works while keeping it simple and not too structured. When people add too much structure to it, is when it get's complicated.
This is straight from David Allen's book "Making it all work"
"There is no freedom without discipline, no vision without a form, no structure without a function. If there were no lines painted on the road, you wouldn't be free to let your mind wander and be creative while you drive. You'd be too busy hoping no one hits you. But if there were too many lanes and restrictions and rules, you'd have traffic moving much slower than it should, as everyone was trying to pay attention to the right place to be. As precarious as walking the critical line might be, there is an optimal relationship of control and perspective. And when that is achieved, all is very well, indeed."
I will jump in on the next post to address some of your thoughts.
3 Posted by Proximo on 07 Jun, 2010 04:48 PM
The Next List:
It's OK to have a long list of NA's. This does not mean you are a slaker in any way, but that you have many commitments in your life. At least they are identified and captured. Trying to make your Next List appear smaller does you no good. If you decided all these items must be done, then GTD is about capturing them in your system and getting them out of your head.
Someday List:
Definitely items don't belong here. Again, if you are trying to make your Next list smaller by moving actionable items into a list designed to capture non-actionable task, you are making things harder for yourself.
Focus:
When you properly process your STUFF and look at your list. You should be able to have clear focus on what to do based on Time, Energy, Context and Priority. The Weekly Review is designed to keep you on track, eliminate things from falling through the cracks and Identify the things that require your attention.
The Today list is what I use for my Focus. These are the items that I have decided to take action on.
Some thoughts:
Your NA's don't have to be 100% completed before you move on to another one. This is also true for Projects with sequential task. When you are working on the NA of a Project with sequential task, there is nothing wrong with not completing that NA and move on to another. You must complete that particular NA as it related to the project in order to move on to the next task but this does not mean you must be 100% completed with the NA before jumping on another Project or Single Task in your Next List.
The notes area is where you can keep yourself updated on the progress of any task and there is no need to re-create the task just because you where not able to complete it. If this was the case, I would be very unproductive.
Life hits you, things change and we live in a dynamic world where well laid out plans can and will be derailed. GTD is about keeping the train on the tracks while allow you to hop on to another train as needed.
You can only do one thing at a time, but you are not required to always complete that one thing before moving on to another. We deal in many activities that change quickly and without our doing. The idea is to have a system you can trust where everything is identified and you are able to make decisions on what to work on next, even when something comes at you that takes your focus to something else.
I won't dive any deeper here which I can do very easily. I just wanted to mention a few things and allow other users to share as well.
Not everything I say will work for everyone and I respect how others decide to implement GTD effectively for themselves. I do think many people complicate things more than they really are and this slows them down.
Now let some others get some thoughts in here and I will jump in where I can. :-)
4 Posted by deekod on 18 Jun, 2010 11:09 PM
I too have flirted with Autofocus, I came back to GTD as AF requires you to select the next task by doing the one that comes up next based on intuition, but I was never comfortable knowing that the next page on the list may have another task that intuition tells me is more important right now. The low overhead and simplicity with AF felt liberating at first, until I found I missed using GTD's natural planning model to determine the actions required to complete a project. This meant that a lot of planning "stuff" remained in my head rather than on paper, not good. I considered doing some simple project plans, and then it occurred to me that I need to go back to GTD as AF was not making my life simpler after all.
GTD requires you to select the next action by area of focus, then context, then energy / mood and time available. You still need to use intuition to select the next action from a list filtered for the above, but in my experience this is less stressful than AF for the reasons given above. GTD also requires outcome focusing, brainstorming and task sequencing/outlining - so as to ensure that project planning is accurate and complete, this ensures that there is nothing in your head allowing the freedom to think clearly on the task at hand.
GTD is often more complicated than AF, but with Nirvana's next major update, I am confident that GTD sill become much simpler forme, hence more effective for all us lucky Nirvana users.
I also believe in ying & yang philosophy in all areas of life, including pesonal effetiveness and time management. That is to say, to experience some freedom you need some ground rules, this is the essence of GTD in my opinion as the quote given by Proximo so elegantly demonstrates.
David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 02 Feb, 2011 06:12 PM.